“What did you do? Did he speak to you?” Upton asked, fully into the story and relishing every detail.
Jacques nodded emphatically. “He spoke, his voice deeper and louder than mine. He said, ‘You’ve set your path with this crime. Until now there was a prayer for you.’
“I could not have been more astonished.
“’So God sent you to dispatch me for my evil?’ I asked.
“He said, ‘I’ve come not to kill you, but to find out if you can be set back on another path.’
“That’s when the absurdity took over. I began to laugh at him. Save me from myself, was he? God thought enough of me to send an angel to turn me around even though I’d just within the past moments committed murder. It seemed hilarious to me. A play by a comedian. The best joke anyone had ever told me.”
“I suppose an angel does not like being laughed at,” Upton said.
Jacques finally smiled. “Indeed,” he said, gracing the old vampire with a response he had already offered.
“I won’t be told what to do with my life, I told the angel. I was by now totally unrepentant. This woman was a liar and a cheat, I said. Why waste your time on her death? The world is better off without her.
“’It is not the dead Adrianne I have come to see,’ he said. ‘It is you who have stepped over the line that will lead to a destruction even you cannot fathom.’
“Well, this was news to me. I asked him then what was it about me that had called him down. Surely there were murderers all over the world more evil than I, more prone to create destruction and devastation.
“I will never forget his reply.”
“Yes?” Upton clenched tight his hands.
“He said, ‘You’re different, even you in your vast stupidity know that. It’s not the murder of this one woman that anyone cares about so much. It’s what you will be called upon to do in the future now that you’ve turned down this terrible pathway.’
“Well, my temper returned at the great being’s presumption to tell me I had a sealed future when I believe I have self-will and the power to make my own decisions. I screamed at him that he was not welcome near me and I wanted him banished. I told him he was no agent of mine and his interference was an abominable thing.
“He flew at me then, striking me across the face the way a mother will strike out at a disobedient child. I fell back, rubbing at the pain in my jaw, and my anger only grew more intense. I leapt toward him and put my arms around his midsection, as that was all I could catch hold of, he being so tall.
“’Wrestle with me?’ he roared, trying to throw me off him. I don’t remember what I said then, so great was my rage. I screamed relentlessly and pulled and hauled and got him off-balance, for he had not really yet tried to dislodge me from his person. I cursed him and cursed any god who had sent him. I told him he could kill me for all I cared, but he would not tell me what to do or how to behave. I was my own man, I screamed up at him, and I didn’t care what happened from his wrath.”
Jacques glanced down at his hands resting on his thighs to gauge their steadiness. Speaking of the angel from that long ago time filled him with anger all over again. He felt once more the superlative rage that drove him then to grab hold of a supernatural being twice his size and scream obscenities into its face. It was at that moment in time he knew no fear and ever afterward had not a trace of it for anyone or anything. He knew his lack of a survival instinct that came normal to all men was not the only trait that made him different, nor was his terrible anger. It was the absence of fear that one night of murder which let him grasp hold and defy his first immortal.
“What happened then?” Upton asked, urging Jacques to continue.
Jacques voice was poised and calm as he said, “The angel took me by the shoulders, tore me loose from his body, and raised me until my feet were off the floor. He looked into my face and he said, ‘You are lost to us.’
“Then he vanished as suddenly as he had come. I dropped to the floor, his hands disappearing from their hold. I rocked on my heels to stay upright and I began to laugh uproariously that I had beaten an angel sent to admonish me.
“When I finally regained composure, I took Adrianne’s body to the bath and dropped it into the tub. I found knives and a cleaver. I dismantled her limbs, put them into large garbage bags and dropped them all over Paris before dawn came.
“The newspapers made a splash about the grisly killing, but except for a few questions from the police, no one ever accused me of the crime.
“And that is how I came to wrestle an angel.”
His tale at an end, Jacques sat again quietly, his mind at ease and empty of thought about the past.
Upton sank back, loosening his hands and spreading them out on his thighs like those of his guest. “That is an inspiring story,” he said. “And I assume it is not a lie.”
Jacques shook his head.
“You’re really something else, Jacques. I don’t know yet what you are or why we’ve met, but I think you may have been right. We were destined to be together for a while. I don’t know what use I’ll have for you, but why don’t you stay here with me and we’ll figure it out together?”
“I’d be pleased to stay,” Jacques said, now rising and yawning largely. “May I sleep a while?”
Dawn had broken and the drapes were lighter with sunlight at their backs.
Upton took Jacques to the bedroom and gave him his own bed. “Sleep here,” he said. “I’ll prepare the guest room for you later.”
As his guest slept, Upton sat in the dim living room going over the Frenchman’s story of the angel. He could find no fault in it, though he knew sometimes people hallucinated and then believed the hallucination real. For some reason this didn’t really seem to be true for Jacques. He believed him implicitly, but what did it all mean? And why was he taking Jacques into his home and into his life?
There had to be a reason that he just didn’t grasp yet. He was as drawn to the younger man as he had been when Balthazar’s woman, Sereny, came to him at his camp offering herself to him. With Sereny he had been overcome with sexual yearning. With Jacques it was not at all a sexual attraction, but something much deeper and more meaningful.
One day he might need him. Until that time came, he’d keep him close and learn more about him and his extraordinary life.
A man who had truly observed, been admonished by, and then wrestled an angel into admitting defeat was absolutely a man Charles Upton could find a use for.
Angels!
The very thought made Upton quake inside.
There were more things between heaven and earth than the vampire. Perhaps from Jacques he would learn of some of them.
At the very least the man was entertaining. He gave Upton pleasure.
That was enough to spare him his life. At least for now.
The jaguar that Upton had taken as his talisman after escaping from Mentor’s monastery prison in Thailand so many, many years ago was a wild beast he adopted to be his face at certain times. As he sat alone and Jacques slept, he let the jaguar face slip out and reform his face into the beastly mask. His head changed from that of an elderly man with dark hair to that of a sleek and fearsome animal. The jaw went from human to cat and jutted forward, the teeth increasing in the wide mouth. The ears rose high on the head and were laid back, and the eyes changed from round to oval, and became a deep menacing amber in color. He had used this face to frighten his troops into following him loyally. He used it when stalking sometimes. Mentor had told him soon he would not be able to change back his head into that of a man, but Upton didn’t believe him. He could do anything he pleased!
He reached up and felt the glossy black hair of the rare black jaguar covering the alien form that was now his own head. If he tried to smile he knew he would look grotesque, so he smiled. There was no one to see him, but that didn’t matter. Being the jaguar was a totem and what it meant to him was private.
He thought of Jacques and decided the Frenchman would be his
stealth tiger. A tiger in the guise of a man who could slip into an enemy’s camp and charm him. A spy. An unerring loyal follower who could go places Upton could not, as vampires knew another vampire, always.
The jaguar smile widened until the cat head looked as if it would split.
A stealth tiger.
The idea was delicious. That is what the newfound new adherent would be.
Chapter 3
Mentor lay on his back in the bed, his mind racing. He had fallen ill days ago and since taking to bed hadn’t been able to rise again. It was as if his legs wouldn’t obey him. He knew what was happening. It wasn’t a disease, as disease could not do harm to a vampire—except the mutated porphyria that debilitated the Craven. No, this was nothing so common as that. This was the end. It was the slow failing and dying of the body even as the vampire spirit lived on.
Bette Kinyo walked into the room and drew back the curtains. It was sundown and the light was gold as it streamed across the walnut desk near the window. She stood in the light and that is how he thought of the small Japanese-American woman. As one who stands in the light. When he’d first met her he had probed her mind and soul and found it clean of the usual human tendencies toward evil. After several meetings, where he tried to wipe her mind of memory and save her from Ross’s retaliation for knowing of the vampire nations, Mentor realized he was falling in love. He had not loved a woman since his human wife who had died hundreds of years before. So his love was a fierce, sudden, but lasting thing that frightened even him. It carried with it responsibility. Especially since, like his first wife, Bette was mortal.
It was not unusual for a vampire to love and marry a mortal, but it was frowned upon, as it was fraught with peril. The mortal died. The vampire did not. The vampire often was tempted to make his lover an immortal—something the mortal often despised after time passed and experience showed the newly-made vampire what the life of the undead was really like. In those cases, love turned to hate, lover to enemy, and it had been known for the newly-made vampire to be so disheartened and lost that he or she turned into the most predatory and conscienceless of all the vampires. Just as Charles Upton had done when made by Ross.
Mentor had tried his best, for instance, to talk Dell, a young and inexperienced vampire at the time, out of marrying Ryan, a human. His wisdom on these matters was disregarded and the union had produced a dhampir, Malachi. Neither fully human, nor totally vampire, the dhampir would suffer mortality, yet be imbued with many vampiric abilities that set him apart from his fellow humans. He would never belong to either community and he would have to lead a life of secrecy.
Mentor sighed to himself thinking of what Malachi’s existence had already caused. Because of him, there had been a Predator uprising that nearly split the vampire nations in two. Then he had let himself be caught and imprisoned by Charles Upton. It took a full year and a half before his mother was able to track him down and ask Mentor to help rescue him. He was still thought of as a risk by some recalcitrant vampires that believed him to be the prophesied dhampir who would create chaos among the nations.
At least Mentor and Bette would not create any offspring, as she was beyond her fertile years, and for that mercy Mentor was immensely grateful. But they would face even greater problems in the future. The greatest of these would be Bette’s eventual earthly passing. Something even now Mentor could not think about without going into a deep depression.
Still, he loved her, he could not deny his love, and he thought now that she loved him back.
A widow, Bette lived in his house, and they were growing closer as time passed. They shared their lives as if they were a married couple, sharing their desires, ambitions, hopes and dreams. And sharing a bed. Until he had fallen so ill and lay alone, wondering how he could have let himself get into such a precarious predicament.
She stood in the light watching him, small hands on her wispy waist. She put forth her no-nonsense face. “Tell me what’s happening to you,” she said.
“I’m dying.” He could never lie to her. He suspected she understood the truth before she ever asked.
Perturbed, but trying not to show it, she said, “You’re a vampire. You can’t die.”
He raised a weak hand in the air. It took most of his strength. Only his voice was strong as the body failed. “You know there are ways for us to die. But, that’s not the point. It’s the body I inhabit that is dying. Not the true me. I have to find a new body.”
If she was surprised, she kept it to herself, always the inscrutable Oriental. He had never discussed with her what happened when the shell gave out and the vampire was forced to move on to a new one.
She came to the bed and sat beside him. She took the hand that was in the air and held it to her breasts. Her warmth seemed to move through his hand and into his entire body. She said, “Mentor, what will you do?”
“I’m contemplating that very problem as we speak. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it every day I’ve lain here unable to move.”
“And your conclusion?”
“I’ll have to get Dolan to bring me a body.”
“Oh, Mentor!” She dropped his hand and turned her face away.
“I know you can’t abide these darker details of my life, Bette, but this is what I have to do in order to survive.”
“If someone doesn’t bring a body, what happens to you?”
Mentor recalled the very first time his body died. He had been in Sweden outside a pub dying in the snow when a vampire from an isolated stronghold in the mountains came to his aid. He was told how to force himself from the old body and quickly invade the new one—a drunkard who had wandered from the pub and was now dying from Mentor’s attack. It took all the willpower and every ounce of strength to do it. No vampire took the passage lightly. It was one of the most difficult things they ever had to do.
He answered her question. “If I don’t get a new body in time, I’ll be lost between worlds, between death and life.”
“A ghost?”
“Not really. Just lost and yearning forever to be one or the other—dead or alive. I’ll not be able to affect what goes on in this world, though my being is intact. I’m not even sure there is such a thing as a ghost. But being the shade of myself is a torture I’d rather not talk about.”
It had almost happened to him in Sweden that first time. He had panicked, not knowing what to do, his old body beating its last beat, the light dwindling like a pinhole narrowing. His soul screamed in horror. He didn’t know then if he would be trapped in the dead body and buried. He didn’t know what would happen to him, but he knew it would be some version of hell.
Bette shook her head in sadness. “This is an awful thing. I don’t know how you bear it.”
He didn’t know either. Only that he had to. He had no other alternative.
“You don’t take over a living person, do you?” She asked, something in her eyes belying her dismay.
“No, we can’t do that. The body has to be newly dead. Some might, and have, killed, in order to have a new vessel, but I wouldn’t kill in order to continue. I should have searched for a dying human before now and watched and waited for him to pass. That I didn’t shows how I’ve been caught up in living and how I’ve ignored the signs of death creeping into this particular body. I’ve been so content with…I’ve lived in this body for many years.”
Her face reflected her relief. She knew explicitly the nature of the vampire, but that didn’t mean she approved of wanton murder, even to sustain life.
“Will you send for Dolan?” He asked. “I haven’t much time.”
She left the room without replying. He heard her leave the house. Dolan, these days, was ministering to the Craven, his brethren. Those sickly creatures Predators despised and Naturals tried to forget. Dolan himself was a Craven, but he bordered between being a full-fledged Predator, so Mentor had taken him as an apprentice. He did anything asked of him and Mentor loved him almost as much as he loved Bette.
Usually M
entor only had to mentally signal Dolan and he would come, even if he had been on the other side of the planet, but since Mentor’s old body was dying, it affected his powers. He felt locked into darkness and silence. He could not move from the bed, send for his helper, or help himself in any way.
He had to have a body. He shouldn’t have let it go this long. Ross was always telling him to get ready, to find someone and let the old shell go. But Mentor had lived in his body for a little over a hundred years. He was connected to it in a way Ross would one day be connected to the body he inhabited. They were all doomed to remain in a body until that body decayed to the point it could no longer go on. Ross would find out…
But it was true he should have been looking, at least. He tried to deny what was happening. He knew it and yet chose not to know it. He was comfortable. He loved the “shell” that he thought of as himself. It was elderly, with white wild hair that he could not manage, with wrinkles and folds in the flesh that he knew intimately.
It was such a task, too, to change over. He hated it, as all of them did, and he’d put it off for far too long. Now, like his very first time, he was trapped, unable to hunt for someone near death to inhabit.
Dolan would help him. He could count on Dolan.
~*~
Bette strode briskly along the broken sidewalk with Dolan at her side. He had come immediately, leaving the Craven house and the miserable creatures in it.
“How long does he have?” She asked, the worry now creasing the flesh between her eyes to make a frown.
“Not long. He should have called for me sooner.”
“You didn’t know he was like this?”
“If I’d known I wouldn’t have stayed away. I thought he was busy. He hadn’t sent me any signals in days.” Dolan slapped a hand on his thigh hard as they hurried. “I should have known something was wrong. What kind of apprentice am I?” He had received no commands, not even a hint that Mentor was in trouble.
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